Thursday, March 21, 2013

SPIDERS

After a Soviet space station crashes into a New York City subwaytunnel, a species of venomous spiders is discovered, and soon theymutate to gigantic proportions and wreak havoc on the city.

Spiders [Nu Image; 2013] was also known as Spiders 3D. Accordingto my Blu-ray box, it features both “Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray on onedisc.” The box’s art is one of the precious few good things aboutthis surely destined for the SyFy Channel movie...and that’s comingfrom a guy who loves giant monster movies.

Spiders is almost completely lacking in suspense as it proceeds inits utterly predictable telling. We see a dead Soviet spacecraftfilled with spiders and dead Soviets. We see a meteor. What arethe odds of the meteor hitting the spacecraft and causing part ofthe craft - a small part with incredibly hardy spiders - to crashinto the New York City subway system?

Subway gets shut down. Spiders start building a nest undetected.Military asshat and former Soviet scientist conspire to make folksthink the area is quarantined due to a virus. Because they see thespiders as weapons of war. What could possibly go wrong?

Patrick Muldoon, who also starred in Ice Spiders, plays a divorcedtransit official obsessed with making the trains run on time. Hisex-wife is a health department official. They have a daughter andshe has a babysitter. Which one of these characters is expendable?

When a transit worker is killed after being bitten by spiders andimplanted with spider-eggs, it is thought that he was electrocutedon the third rail of a subway line. An autopsy recovers the eggs,including the “Queen Spider” egg. Military asshat man wants thategg and sends black ops hitmen to get it. Though they get the egg,the former Mrs. Muldoon escapes with her life. The ex-wife isplayed by Christa Campbell, whose credits include Hyenas, Kraken:Tentacles of the Deep and Mansquito.

The former Soviet scientist pauses to admire the fully-grown QueenSpider at one point. Is she flattered enough not to impale him onone of her arms? You tell me.

Is there any good in Spiders? Actually, a couple things.

The spiders themselves are decent enough. We get some okay actionsequences when they leave the nest to explore the territory they willbe conquering for their queen.

The daughter of the stars escapes from quarantine with her doomedbabysitter. She features in the only truly suspenseful moments inthis movie when she tries to hide from the spiders and the queen infirst a toy store and then underneath the city streets.

The Queen Spider is pretty awesome in her size and strength. But,unfortunately, she suffers from something common to giant monstermovies. Her size changes depending on what the script needs her todo. Once she makes her above-ground appearance at about the sizeof a two-story building, she shouldn’t be able to fit back into thesubway tunnels.

Back to the bad...

Colonel Asshat has a particularly creepy black ops assassin on thejob. The guy is scarier than most of the spiders. Given the taskof destroying any trail leading to the military, he’s efficient andruthless...and then disappears from the movie as if he were neverthere. I admit it, I wanted to see him die in a horrible manner. That’s how I roll.

Queen Spider is chasing the hero and his family through the subwaytunnels. This is her big death scene. I figured the transit guywould use the third rail to fry her. He doesn’t. How he does killher depends on the subway system being used to store a buttload ofexplosive gas. Because what danger could that possibly pose to themillions of people who ride the subways daily?

Transit guy, ex-wife and daughter reunite. Maybe there’s hope fortheir family. Military units are cleaning up the damage from thespiders, presumably either killing or capturing surviving critters.We can all rest easier knowing the menace is over. Care to guesswhat the last shot of the movie is?

Spiders will almost certainly air on the SyFy Channel before long. Even if its 89-minute running time gets cut for extra commercials,I don’t recommend buying or renting it. Even if you’re as obsessedwith cheesy monster movies as I am, you can wait and watch it forfree. I sure wish I had.

Spiders was the last of three monster movies I watched while underthe weather this past weekend. I’m still feeling off my game, butI think the bloggy thing will move on to other stuff on the morrow.See you then.

3 comments:

If they'd made this movie in the 1950s and it was on "Chiller Theater," we would have thought it was great. And, of course, the crisis would be all the fault of those danged Russkies, typical of the mentality back then.

Arrgh!!! I should have paid more attention to the link, since I missed the word 'spider. My arachnophobia sure kicked in when I got here!

Bob, back in the '50s movies like this were cranked out by folks knowing they were doing 'B' flicks that were going to be part of a double-feature. Still they did their best with what they had. Nowadays, the folks doing them think they are the next Spielberg or Lucas, but haven't had their break yet. These guys think this is beneath them so don't even try.